Anne McAllister - The Antonides Marriage Deal

He certainly wouldn’t be looking at her, appalled, as Elias Antonides was, like she was something nasty he’d found on the bottom of his shoe. At least she didn’t have to worry that Elias was in on her father’s little game.

But if he found her presence so distasteful, why hadn’t he just told her father—and his—no? As managing director—not to mention the man who had pulled Antonides Marine back from the edge of the financial abyss over the past eight years—surely he had some say in the matter.

Maybe he was just always surly.

Well, Tallie wasn’t surly, and she was determined to make the best of this as a business opportunity, regardless of what her father’s hidden agenda was.

So she grabbed Elias’s hand and shook it firmly. “You must be Elias. I’m glad to meet you at last. And I’m glad you liked the cookies. I thought I should begin as I mean to go on.”

“Making cookies?” He stared at her as if she’d lost her mind, then scowled, his brow furrowing, which would have made the average man look baffled and confused. It made Elias Antonides look brooding and dangerous and entirely too tempting. Silently Tallie cursed her father.

“Yes,” she said firmly. “I’ve always found that people like them—and so they enjoy coming to work.”

Elias’s brows lifted, and he looked down his patrician nose at her. “Enjoyment is highly overrated, Ms Savas,” he said haughtily.

Tallie let out a sigh of relief. Oh, good, if he was going to be all stiff and pompous, he would be much easier to resist.

“Oh, I don’t agree at all,” she said frankly. “I think it’s enormously important. If employee morale is low,” she informed him, “the business suffers.”

His teeth came together with a snap. “Morale at Antonides Marine is not low.”

“Of course it isn’t,” Tallie agreed. “And I want to keep it that way.”

“Cookies do not make morale.”

“Well, they don’t hurt,” she said. “And they certainly improve the quality of life, don’t you think?” She glanced around at the group who had been scarfing down her best offering and was gratified to see several heads nod vigorously.

A glare from Elias brought them to an abrupt halt. “Don’t you have work to do?” he asked them.

The heads bobbed again, and the group started to scatter.

“Before you go, though,” Tallie said. “I’d like to meet you.”

Elias didn’t look pleased, but he stuffed his hands in his pockets and stood silently while she introduced herself to each one, shook hands and tried to commit all their names to memory.

Paul was blond and bespectacled and crew-cut and personified efficiency. “I hope you’ll be very happy here,” he told her politely.

Dyson was black with flying dreadlocks and a gold hoop earring. “You’re good for my morale,” he told her with a grin, and snagged another cookie.

Rosie was short and curvy with flame-coloured hair. It was her job, she said, to keep everyone in line. “Even him.” She jerked her head at Elias. “I never make coffee,” she told Tallie. “Or cookies.” Then she confided that she might—if she could have these recipes.

“Sure, no problem,” Tallie said.

Lucy wore her silver hair in a bun and had a charm bracelet with a charm for every grandchild. Trina had long black hair with one blue streak, while Cara’s was short and spiky and decidedly pink. Giulia looked as if she were going to deliver triplets any minute.

“Boy or girl?” Tallie asked her.

“Boy,” Giulia said. “And soon, I hope,” she added wearily. “I want to see my feet.”

Tallie laughed. “My friend Katy said the same thing.”

They were a nice group, she decided after she’d chatted with them all. Friendly, welcoming. Everyone said they were happy to have her. Well, everyone except Elias Antonides.

He never said a word.

Finally, when the group began to head back to their various jobs, she looked at him. He was studying her as if she were a bomb he had to defuse.

“Perhaps we should talk?” she suggested. “Get acquainted?”

“Perhaps we should,” he said, his voice flat. He raked a hand through his hair, then sighed and called after Paul and Dyson, “Just keep going on the Corbett project. We’ll meet later.”

“If you need to meet with them, don’t let me interrupt,” Tallie said.

“I won’t.”

No, not really very welcoming at all.

But Tallie persisted, determined to get a spark of interest out of him. “I apologize for not letting you know I was already here,” she said. “I came in about seven. I could hardly wait,” she confided. “I was always getting to school on the first day hours early, too. Do you do that?”

“No.”

Right. Okay, let’s take a different tack.

“I found my office. Thank you for the name plaque, by the way. I don’t think I’ve ever had a plaque before. And thank you for all the fiscal reports. I got them from my father, so I’d already read them and I have a few questions. For example, have you considered that Corbett’s, while a viable possible acquisition, might not be the best one to start with? I thought—”

“Look, Ms Savas,” he said abruptly, “this isn’t going to work.”

“What isn’t going to work?”

“This! This question-and-answer business! You baking cookies, for God’s sake, then coming in with questions concerning things you know nothing about! I don’t have time for it. I have a business to run.”

“A business I am president of,” she reminded him archly.

“On account of a bet.”

Tallie stopped dead. “Bet? What bet?”

Hard dark eyes met hers accusingly. “You don’t know?”

But before she could do more than begin to shake her head, his jaw tightened and he sighed. “No, probably you don’t.” He opened his mouth, then shut it again. “Not here,” he muttered, glancing around the open break room. “Come on.”

And he grabbed her arm, steered her out the door and down the hallway, past the chattering temps and his flame-haired, goggle-eyed secretary and straight into his office. He shut the door with a definite click.

Elias Antonides’s office was far smaller than the one he’d given her. It didn’t even have a window. It had a desk overflowing with papers and files, two filing cabinets, a blueprint cabinet, three bookcases and one glorious wall painted by the same artist who had done the murals in the entry downstairs.

“Wow,” Tallie said involuntarily.

Elias looked startled. “Wow?”

She nodded at the mural. “It’s unexpected. Breathtaking. You don’t need a window.”

“No.” He stared at the mural a long moment, his jaw tight. Then abruptly he turned his gaze back to her and gestured toward a chair. “Sit down.”

It was more a command than an invitation. But it didn’t seem worth fighting about, so Tallie sat, then waited for him to do likewise. But he didn’t. He cracked his knuckles and paced behind his desk. A muscle worked in his jaw. He opened his mouth to speak, then stopped, paced some more and finally came to a stop directly behind the desk where at last he turned to face her. But he still didn’t speak.

“The bet?” Tallie prompted, not sure she wanted to know this, but reasonably certain it would shed light on why Elias was so upset.

“My father fancies himself a racing sailor,” he said at last. “And after he sold forty percent of Antonides Marine without telling anyone of his intentions—”

Uh-oh.

“—he hadn’t screwed things up badly enough yet. So he and your father made a little bet.” Elias cracked his knuckles again. She got the feeling he wished he was cracking his father’s head.

“What sort of bet?” Tallie asked warily. Dear God, her father hadn’t bet her hand in marriage, had he? He hadn’t done anything quite that outrageous yet in his attempt to marry her off, but she wouldn’t put it past him.